PETALING JAYA: Visa, a global leader in digital payments, has launched Visa Agentic Ready across Asia-Pacific, including Malaysia. The global programme is designed to support the payments ecosystem in the era of agentic commerce.
In its first phase, Visa Agentic Ready focuses on issuer readiness, providing a structured pathway for issuers to test, validate and understand agent-initiated transactions in a controlled, production-grade environment.
The programme enables issuers to experience how AI agents initiate and complete transactions on behalf of consumers, and to test their readiness to support agentic commerce– while maintaining the trust, control and protections that underpin the Visa network.
Visa Malaysia country manager Previn Pillay said, “As commerce becomes increasingly automated, trust, security and consumer control become even more important. Visa Agentic Ready gives Malaysian issuers a practical and structured way to better understand how agent initiated payments could work on the Visa network – before these experiences scale.
“At the same time, Visa is also working globally with merchants, platforms, and technology partners to enable trusted agent -driven commerce, so that when these experiences mature, they come together seamlessly across the ecosystem. This helps ensure innovation can progress responsibly, while keeping people firmly in control of how and when payments are made.”
Visa Agentic Ready is powered by Visa’s foundational network capabilities, bringing together tokens, identity, risk and controls to examine how trusted agent‑initiated payments could be enabled across use cases. This builds on Visa Intelligent Commerce – Visa’s portfolio of initiatives and solutions focused on enabling trusted, AI-driven commerce experiences at scale.
Bringing agentic commerce to life at scale requires coordination across the payments ecosystem. Visa has enrolled several partners from 10 markets across the region into the Agentic Ready programme including Alliance Bank, CIMB Bank, Hong Leong Bank and Maybank in Malaysia, with additional partners expected to join as the programme expands to merchants and ecosystem enablers.
“Preparing for agent-initiated payments isn’t something banks can do in isolation. Programmes like Visa Agentic Ready allow us to test and better understand these new transaction flows as part of a broader, trusted payments ecosystem,” said Alliance Bank group chief consumer banking officer Gan Pai Li.
CIMBBank and CIMB Malaysia CEO Gurdip Singh Sidhu said, “AI is reshaping consumer behaviours and business models at unprecedented speed. Visa Agentic Ready reflects our vision of banking that is intuitive and seamlessly woven into life, providing a structured way for us to test, learn and prepare for agent-initiated payments. This allows us to deliver secure and responsible AI powered experiences to our customers while maintaining the trust and controls our customers expect.”
Hong Leong Bank personal financial services managing director Andrew Jong commented, “Agent‑initiated payments introduce new considerations around how transactions are initiated and governed. Visa Agentic Ready gives banks like ours the opportunity to validate these new payment scenarios early, understand the real‑world implications, and assess how they could be supported responsibly before any broader adoption. This kind of structured readiness is important as payment experiences continue to evolve.”
On the launch of Visa Agentic Ready, Maybank cards, group community financial services head B. Ravintharan K Balakrishnan stated, “Trust remains fundamental as new payment experiences emerge. Visa Agentic Ready allows us to explore agent‑initiated payments in a controlled way, helping us build confidence in how these models could scale responsibly — without compromising security or customer control.”
Through the controlled, production-grade testing environment, the programme validates how agent-initiated payments operate in real world environments, helping issuers build confidence as these new experiences become a reality.